Our trip from Melbourne to Delhi was broken up by a 12 hour stopover in KL, Malaysia. We arrived at about 8am and had a maccas breakfast and then checked into a hotel near LCCT for three hours so we could nap and shower. Our friends Mira and Khalid then picked us up from the hotel and took us to the delicious Yemini restaurant near their house in Cyberjaya. We had a delicious lunch; Scott had lamb kapsa and I had chicken kebabs - both dishes came with a massive mound of delicious rice which is cooked with ghee and various [View Full Entry]

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Scott and I both finish have both finished our degrees so are heading off to the Indian subcontient before we have to enter the real world. Here are our plans: India 22 Nov: Arrive in Delhi 23 & 24 Nov: Delhi 25 Nov: Train to Amritsar 26 - 28 Nov: Amritsar 29 Nov: Bus to Shimla 30 Nov - 1 Dec: Shimla 2 Dec: Train to Delhi 3 Dec: Delhi Nepal 4 Dec: Fly to Kathmandu 5 & 6 Dec: Kathmandu 7 Dec: Bus to Pokhara 8-11 Dec: Pokhara 12 Dec: Bus to Chitwan NP 13 - 16 Dec: Chitwan NP [View Full Entry]

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When we got off the bus from Probolinggo in Java, we were swamped by taxi drivers...one of them got my attention by saying “excuse me miss, taxi with meter”. “Meter” is not a word which is commonly used by taxi drivers in Asia until you twist their arm. Normally we make an effort to avoid using the taxi drivers who harass you, but this guy was polite which was a nice change so we all climbed into his taxi and, amazingly, he turned the meter on. He got us to our street in Sanur easily enough, however couldn’t seem to find [View Full Entry]

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Mt. Bromo was a marathon effort to get to, luckily it was worth it. We boarded a minibus in Yogya at 9am in the morning, picked up all the other passengers, including an Indonesian Catholic nun who was going to her new convent in Probolinggo. Our ride was uneventful, uncomfortable and horribly long. We had a quick stop for lunch and a few toilet breaks, but basically drove for 10.5hrs straight. After 10 and a half hours we changed to another minibus which drove us another hour or so to our hotel Cemoro Lewang...all up we spent 12hrs on the bus [View Full Entry]

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Our train ride from Bandung was horrible. The 8 hours trip began at 8pm, which meant we arrived in Yogya at 4am after a sleepless night. Unsurprisingly, as it was 4am, the town was still asleep so we decided to try our luck and turn up at the hotel we had booked. Fortunately two of the three rooms we had reserved were available so we all crawled into bed and finally got some sleep. We spent our first day touring the sites of Yogya. We had a relatively slow start after getting up at about 10am however after breakfast we caught [View Full Entry]

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The train ride from Jakarta to Bandung was really enjoyable. The train snakes its way through the mountains past little villages, rice terraces and tea plantations. Bandung has a much cooler climate than Jakarta and as a result a lot of people from Jakarta head there for the weekend. The town itself has 3 million people and is the regional capital of West Java. At the train station a local from the ‘Tourist Information Centre’ attached himself to us and walked us to the hotel we had selected from the Lonely Planet guide. The hotel was revolting - small, cramped and [View Full Entry]

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Scott and I are travelling with friends this trip. They all spent two weeks in the Philippines while I worked and I met up with them in KL on the 12th of Jan. I arrived in KL on the 11th on an airasia flight from Australia. The seats were, as expected, tiny which wasn’t much of an issue as I had an entire row to myself. Once my bag finally appeared on the baggage carousel (why does my bag always seem to be the last one out?) at the LCCT airport I caught the 9RM bus to KL Sentral train station [View Full Entry]

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KL was bad for our holiday budgets...we spent the large majority of 3 days there shopping! We arrived in KL on the train back from Singapore reasonably early in the morning and caught the monorail to Bukit Bintang Station in the Golden Triangle area. We had been told by Mira and Khalid (from the Perhentians) that this was the area we should stay in as its pretty central and has good food, accommodation and heaps of shopping - turns out thats true. Just down the road from our hotel were BB Plaze, Sungei Wang Plaza, Imbi Plaza, Plaza Low Yat and [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Singapore about 11 hours after we got on the train at Jerentut in Malaysia. The train was incredibly slow and at each stop people got on/off the train to have a look around, buy food and generally slow the journey even more. We also had some mechanical issues which meant we stopped somewhere between stations along the way for about an hour and a half, luckily they were solved when someone was genius enough to suggest using a 30cm meat clever from the kitchen...hmm I'm sure we didn't need whichever cable they cut? Scott's friend Bill was waiting [View Full Entry]

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Having stayed in the Perhentians for an extra three days, we got back to the mainland with about 50 ringit ($17) left thinking that there would be an ATM there. Unfortunately this wasn't the case, but our bus driver assured us that we would be able to stop off at an ATM before we reached the national park. After a couple of hours and breakfast and lunch already eaten, the bus pulled up at a shop front and said you need to go and buy your national park entry tickets...uhhh....crap! we had about 10 ringit ($3) on us and we were [View Full Entry]

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